New developer here, general questions about EPI

Cheung Liu

Vote:

Hi,

I have just setup VS + extension and am ready to develop. But I have some elementary questions that I couldnt find answer to by reading guides:

1) if I develop add-on for version 8.0, will it work on newer versions like 9,10,11?

2) where can I see the version distribution statistics. Like Android has: https://developer.android.com/about/dashboards/

3) I see there are some add-ons offered by Epi the company such as episerver campaign, find, commerce. Is it possible for a developer outside of epi company to create a similar add-on or does it require one to know the source code of EPI itself and use non public methods?

4) If I were to develop something that would compete with Epi Campaign, will it be harder to get approved?

thanks in advance! I am excited to develop!

#195748

Aug 07, 2018 10:53

Vote:

Hi, trying to answer some of your questions.

1) It depends, there is no definitive answer to this. When you implement your add-on you most likely take dependency to some Episerver NuGet packages and limit those to range 8 but less than 9. Then when a newer version comes out you would need to test that your add-on works with that without code changes then you could release a new version of your add-on with Episerver NuGet package dependency range like 8 but less than 10 or if there is a braking change in Episerver you could create the new package with range 9 but less than 10.

2) I'm not really sure if that kind of version information is available outside Episerver. If you are developing something totally new you most likely will target version 11+ (unless you have the time to ensure it works with older releases). Episerver uses the continuous releases, so usually we get new minor update weekly. I myself most likely wouldn't develop anything below version 10 ;)

3) It is possible and idea that developers and third parties can develop add-ons for Episerver. This addons page lists also some 3rd party add-ons. There are also plenty of open source add-ons developed by companies or individual developers. Try google "episerver add-on github" for example.

4) Nope. I don't think so. For example Dan blogged about Vulcan (google Vulcan and you find other posts too) which is an open source project to use ElasticSearch with Episerver (competes kind of with Episerver Find).

#195792

Aug 07, 2018 21:14

Cheung Liu

Vote:

thanks for the reply Annti ! :)

although I am not sure if you understood me correctly on 3), i think i got all the answers i needed

#195793

Edited, Aug 07, 2018 21:45

Vote:

Hi Cheung, can you clarify your question about #3?

To add to my previous answer on #3: No, you don't need to know the source code of Episerver (but sometimes it helps if you have a peek in your favorite .NET decompiler). When you are asking about calling non-public methods I assume you are referring to use reflection here to invoke non-public methods - this is the moment you know you are doing it wrong! You are supposed to use the public APIs and integrate "stuff" to Episerver - not hack the Episerver :D

#195801

Aug 08, 2018 5:49